Aircraft display systems that generate two dimensional images indicative of nearby weather conditions (e.g., precipitation density) on a conventional two dimensional display (e.g., a moving map display, a vertical situation display, etc.) are known. Such aircraft display systems are well-suited for providing a pilot (or other viewer) with images indicative of two dimensional weather data of the type collected by conventional weather radar systems. However, such aircraft display systems are generally unable to express three dimensional, or volumetric, weather data in an intuitive manner. With the recent advent of vertical scanning radar systems, which collect weather data for a scanned volume of space, a need has developed for an aircraft weather display system that is capable of expressing three dimensional weather data in an intuitive and readily comprehendible manner.
While display systems capable of generating three dimensional images have been developed outside of the avionics field, such display systems are generally not amenable to implementation as an aircraft weather display system. Such three dimensional display systems typically utilize relatively complex computational processes (e.g., matrix transformations, recursive algorithms, etc.) to build the three dimensional image and consequently require a relatively large amount of memory and throughput. In addition, such conventional rendering techniques generally require a considerable length of time to render a three dimensional image. While this time delay may be acceptable in certain applications wherein the three dimensional data remains stagnant (e.g., in the case of a magnetic resonance image (MRI) of a patient's brain), such a time delay is problematic in the case of an aircraft weather display system wherein the three dimensional weather data changes rapidly and the rendering process is continually repeated.
Considering the foregoing, it is desirable to provide a rendering technique for generating a three dimensional image that requires relatively little memory and throughput and, therefore, permits a three dimensional image to be rapidly updated to reflect changes in the three dimensional data. It should further be appreciated that it would be desirable to provide an aircraft weather display system that employs such a technique to produce a three dimensional weather image indicative of volumetric weather data received from, for example, a vertical scanning radar system. Other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description of the invention and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background of the invention.